


The Good Poet

by theonlytwin



Category: V for Vendetta
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonlytwin/pseuds/theonlytwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruth perseveres to be a good poet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Poet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AR](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=AR).



> A madness treat for AR, for the fantastic prompt of Ruth and Valerie backstory. There is more Ruth then Valerie, and possibly more bittersweet then you had hoped? I can only hope I did them justice.

Ruth's earliest memory is of her father. He's slamming her head into the wall, everything is bright and dark and her mother, her mother is there but not there, eyes looking right over her.

She remembers some of the best times of her life at boarding school, white crisp sheets and giggling girlflesh, innocent, innocent. The fresh red rosebeds outside the window at the beginning of the spring semester was the most comforting thing in the world.

She wrote poetry when she was thirteen. Mostly it was about girls, bright eyed girls who glow with everything they have not experienced. Some of it is about nature, birds and flowers and sunsets and the like.

One is about her father.

It took her years to realise that everyone writes poetry at that age. It's a rite of passage, something that every child must do on the journey to adulthood. The difference is that the good poets destroy their poems and make something of their lives, they run guns in Africa and raise families in Chilton and toil as ambulance drivers. The bad poets get theirs published.

Ruth perseveres to be a good poet. She declined her father's offer (order) of university and took up work as a baker, volunteered in a homeless shelter, made fascinating friends. She had sex with a man once, a young and very polite apprentice from the bakery. He was soft, and smelt of butter, and fumbled.

She thought she should check, she explained to Erica, an actress she was in love with for a moment. Just in case.

Erica had frowned. It was Erica who convinced her to get into film, on the basis of her perfect bones and incredible voice range. It's not something she would have considered (it seems a lot like the kind of thing a bad poet would do) but she is good at it, in a way she feels she has no right to be.

Her parents taught her the true value of things, so she is content to live on very little. Crisp white sheets and fresh red roses are quite enough. On this principle she carefully chooses a very few, very good films and plays to be in, and keeps on at the shelter.

When Ruth started getting more parts then Erica, she had tried to convince Ruth that she should get out of the business. She got out of Erica's life instead.

Six months later, on a shoot in the sun, she sees a dark haired woman hanging crisp white sheets, a sweet Snow White with a crooked smile, who looks at her. Who sees her.

She thinks she could write poetry again.

Life with Valerie is exactly what life should be. They work and kiss and keep roses and talk and touch and walk hand in hand, like an old-time courting couple.

It's through an odd, extended grapevine that she hears about Erica. A cameraman that Erica preferred had told George, whose hair was dyed by Amy, who was a PA on a film Ruth was auditioning for, that he had heard that Erica was missing. Not a trace.

Ruth hopes that Erica has gone the way of the good poet, has struck out into the world in a daring way. She keeps an eye on the death notices, just in case.

That's when she spots her father's name. She puts the paper down, for a moment, and looks at Valerie, stirring a pot at the stove, and opens it again.

The interesting thing is the death date.

It is several weeks before the funeral date.

His body, she realises, staring at the roses, lay undiscovered. For weeks. She feels so sorry for him, she begins to cry, which she has never done outside of a role. She feels silly, but Valerie strokes her hair and kisses her eyelids and asks and asks and folds her hands around her face and holds her until the pot burns on the stove.

She finds herself unutterably lucky, to have this lovely woman, to have fresh red roses and crisp white sheets and a home where things are seen and there is no violence. She wishes they could stay inside forever.


End file.
